PSN experiences total blackout, causes some offline games to stop working [Update 2]

Update: Sounds like the PSN outage’s only part of the problem. PS3s that haven’t suckled at the Internet’s bounteous teat for years are reverting their clocks to 12/31/1999 for some reason. If we didn’t know about Sony’s strict no-mad-scientist policy, we’d swear this was part of some larger conspiracy. Thanks, Joystiq and lindblum_resident.

Update 2: SCEA’s said in a seperate blog post on the US PS Blog that it has “narrowed down the issue and have engineers working to restore service even as you read this”.

Original: Occasionally, when an Internet connection drops, you might hear someone ask “who shut-off the Internet?” Well, that entire notion’s ridiculous. You can’t just yank the cord on the entire Internet.

For the past couple hours, Sony’s PlayStation Network has been bombarding users with 8001050F error codes. But what does this mean for you, befuddled PS3 owner? Well, for the time being, your fourth Heavy Rain playthough’s gonna have to be put on hold. See, the error locks users out of PSN and corrupts trophy data. These two things, when combined, cause certain games to lock up and throw away the keys.

Many games – like the aforementioned Heavy Rain and Demon’s Souls – won’t run regardless of whether or not they normally require a PSN connection to function.

Sony, meanwhile, is “looking into” the sudden error epidemic, but hasn’t managed to solve the issue just yet.

We’ll be sure to let you know as soon as Sony finds the guy who tripped over the big, neon sign-illuminated PSN cord.